Tavares Annexation Passes, Wilson Wins Mount Dora Post

November 6, 1986|By Jim Runnels of The Sentinel Staff

TAVARES — When the dust settled, Tavares was one mobile home park bigger, incumbents held on to their offices in Eustis and Bob Wilson was enjoying the resounding defeat of both his opponents and critics in Mount Dora.

In Eustis, Homer Royals, 41, and Fred Yowler, 71, kept the commission posts they have filled for the past term.

Royals was the top vote-getter with 1,606 votes. Yowler was second with 1,601 and political newcomer Larry Wade was third with 1,492 votes. The two highest vote-getters were declared winners.

Wade, 44, ran a surprisingly strong race with the outcome of the election uncertain until the last of the seven city precincts reported its results.

In Tavares, city dwellers and residents in the eastern section of Imperial Terrace Mobile Home Park voted to annex the subdivision into the city.

The votes inside the park were 233 in favor of annexation, and 78 opposed. In the city, 1,226 voters approved, while 585 didn't.

The vote clears the way for the city's next big decision: how to hook the residents up to water and sewer lines and how much to charge them for the work.

But the city is expected to face complications because officials have to decide whether they want to run the lines just to the park, or follow their engineers' advice and install lines in the entire Dead River Road area on the western edge of town that includes the park.

Residents are expected to be charged about $3,400 per residence for new lines and hook-up fees. Officials are considering billing other landowners in the area for the extended improvements, if they are made.

The biggest upset in Golden Triangle elections was in Mount Dora.

In that election, former Councilman Bob Wilson won a landslide victory over three other opponents, despite intense efforts by his critics to block his success.

Wilson, 46, got 773 votes, almost twice the number received by his nearest opponent, newspaper columnist Jim Conway, 61, who polled 394.